music

Music plays a huge part in how I process the world. Like smell, it can take me back instantaneously to a place, a time, a person. The connections it makes for me are ones I both do and do not decide--I make a playlist every month of new music or old music I want to pay attention to, and, naturally, those songs are often ones I come to identify with that month. But then there are others that happen par hasard, like when I was going to Paris on the train and listened to the song "America," by Simon and Garfunkel, and that night in the hostel met a kid from New Jersey (counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike/ they've all come/ to look for America) and then, later still, talked with another stranger about how beautiful that song is. Now I can't hear it without being there. Music is a way of being everywhere, which makes me both content and melancholy. Transience and permanence. Belonging and outsiderness.

I'm back from Paris. I am never leaving Paris.

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I will update the shop in the first week or so of February. There will be a few travel wallets. I have gotten a lot of emails about them, and I'm sorry I can't make enough for everyone, but I will try to have a few, among the rest of the things.

And, Sarah emailed me to tag me for six strange things about myself. I don't like memes but I can tell you six things, I think.

1/ I like doing chores, but I don't like planning to do them.
2/ My favorite parts of the body are the little bone pieces that jut out from the elbow.
3/ I don't like pudding, bananas, or yoghurt, because of the texture, and I don't eat fish.
4/ Until I was in high school, I hadn't listened to pop/top 40 radio.
5/ I can walk straight with my eyes closed.
6/ I always envision myself as being as tall as the people around me (I'm 5'2").

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Hello to all you delurkers!